Warsaw Mommy Blog

I must admit that being an English-speaking Mommy blogger out here in Poland is a bit of an isolated experience. Even if I belonged to BlogHer, I couldn’t get to any of the conferences, and I read with envy about y’all meeting online through various sites and groups, and then driving across the city, or a couple of hours north, to meet in person over coffee, or for a ‘Mommy Blogger’ weekend. Most of my readers and followers are in the US, the UK and Australia, and here’s me: all alone in the wilds of Poland.

So imagine how thrilled I was to get an e-mail from a woman named Coco, who is Venezuelan but lives and works in France, at the Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Agency and her job includes travelling all over the world, doing research for clients. (Yeah, I know! How amazing of a job is THAT, right?). She got handed an assignment to come to Poland and do ‘on the ground’ research about what Moms and kids in Warsaw want and need. And it turns out? That when you google ‘Warsaw English Mom’ and other similar search parameters (a) my blog comes up (b) it scores high on google and (c) it’s actually the only English blog on this topic. So I’m a bit alone over here, but hey! I’m unique!

So Coco and her tall, handsome, Latin-lover-esque cousin Diego, and her small white fluffy puppy Kika all met me for lunch at Biosfeera last Thursday… and what a delight it was to meet them all. We chatted about Poland, and its culture, and raising kids here as a foreigner as opposed to as a Polish woman. All in all, it was an eye-opening experience for us, and the best part? Coco travels to Warsaw regularly, so I have met someone wonderful and funny and interesting online who I get to actually speak to in person! Face-to-face! Live! Yeah, it’s weird. But nice!

Turns out: I have a fan (well, two, if you count Diego. Which I do. And maybe three if you count Kika. Which I also do); cool, huh?

Now….I just need to meet Sylvia when she comes to Poland this summer, and then I’ll be good for ‘groupies’. So Sylvia: when are we off for sushi??

(Thanks to Diego for taking the photo of me and Coco; and thanks to Coco for sending it on).

So, it’s 9:45 at night here in Warsaw – greetings, y’all! – and guess what I have just finished doing?

This.

Tomorrow afternoon, Max’s playschool is putting on a performance to celebrate the last ‘official’ day of the school year (a bit ridiculous, seeing as 100% of the kids will be back on Friday, but you know, I am all for anything that has my kid singing and dancing) and all the munchkins have to dress up as a frog, or a bunny, or something else which I forget, so I had to decide between Max being a frog or bunny, and settled on bunny because, really, how hard is it to draw bunny ears?

Turns out that I am even more artistically challenged than even I realised, and so tonight provided yet another example of what I like to call ‘Thank God For Google’. I googled ‘bunny ears template’ and then spent a lovely 30 minutes colouring them and pasting them on to cardboard (actually, I used one of my work files) then cutting it all out. And as I did this, I suddenly realised that I am one of those Moms who do arts-and-crafts-type stuff for their kids in the evenings, after the kids have gone to bed. If you had told me even just five years ago that I’d be sitting here colouring bunny ears for a school show I’d have tossed my glossy hair, dropped my sushi, spilled my expensive white wine and then fallen off my chair laughing, losing a fabulous high-heeled sandal in the process; note that all of this would conceivably have taken place at 9:45 on a Thursday evening, or any evening really, as I was hardly ever home at night.

Having said this: I did all this arty Mommy stuff with an Adrien Arpel papaya enzymatic massage facial mask slathered on my face and throat. Perhaps all is not lost.

So, have y’all heard that Poland is now the only country in Europe where chemical castration is mandatory for paedophiles, or for people who have been found guilty of raping a close relative who is a minor? The law was actually passed in the Senate back in September – and the vote was almost unanimous: 400 ministers voted to pass the law, one minister voted against it and three others abstained – but it came into full effect yesterday. The government released a statement late last year, right after the law was passed: “The purpose of this action is to improve the mental health of the convict, to lower his libido and thereby to reduce the risk of another crime being committed by the same person” and the country’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, said in a separate statement that he supported obligatory castration for paedophiles, whom he branded ‘degenerates’. He said he did not believe “one can use the term ‘human’ for such individuals, such creatures. Therefore I don’t think protection of human rights should refer to these kind of events… I want to introduce in Poland the most rigorous law possible regarding criminals who rape children.” At the time, he was criticised by human rights groups outside of Poland, but he has never apologised for his stance, nor has he retracted his words.

And you know what? Nobody in Poland is the slightest bit disturbed about any of this: a survey done earlier this week shows that about 85% of Poles are totally in favour of the law as it stands; the remaining 15% are generally in favour with a few reservations. The number of people who are actively against the law, or who feel any concern for the human rights of paedophiles, is so minimal that it is almost non-existent. The foreign press is asking slightly muted questions, and international human rights groups are not happy (though it must be said, there have been no major explosive reactions) but within Poland, people are perfectly OK with the whole notion. I find this very interesting, and have spent the past couple of days pondering why that might be.

I mean, imagine that the same thing tried to get passed in the US Congress. Imagine trying to get an almost 100% positive vote to pass a law which says that paedophiles or fathers who rape their own children will be forcibly castrated. Not, you know, physically but chemically. The way it actually works here in Poland is that an offender serves their court-determined prison term, and then six months before they are due for release a group of psychologists, sexologists, psychiatrists and some legal advisers meet with the offender and do rigorous interviews, tests and consultations. Based on this, this group of people then decides if chemical castration will take place. If so, treatment (which is a series of medical procedures which lower the libido) begins just before the person is released from jail; if not, I have no idea what happens, but I assume that this person will be monitored as any other sex offender who has been returned to the community at large: they will have to report to a parole officer and they are not free to leave their town or city, and they are not permitted to be within a certain distance of schools, parks, etc.

In some countries, like the Czech Republic and even Canada, chemical castration is undergone voluntarily by people who fully recognise that they are sick, and they have no control over their physical urges, and they are often dismayed and horrified at the fact that they hurt children in order to satisfy a destructive addiction. These people (and they are almost always men) want to be castrated, so they can have a normal life and not rape society’s most vulnerable. A cynic might argue that they also voluntarily take the drugs so they can get better terms of release, or earlier parole, or whatever. I don’t really care about their motivations as much as the effects, which are that these men stop abusing and raping kids. I can get behind that. Interestingly, a number of American states give courts the option of imposing a sentence involving chemical castration, and in some states the punishment is mandatory under certain circumstances. But this is not nation-wide: it comes down to individual states.

I was stunned to hear that paedophilia is a major societal problem here in Poland: apparently 700 cases of paedophilia are reported to police in Poland each year, according to justice officials. I am not amazed at the fact that it happens – because it happens everywhere – but at the fact that it is simply not discussed here. The media does not shout inky columns of protest; lawyers and police officers do not demand help or resources to cope with the issue; there is no raging debate about ‘castration vs rehabilitation’ in the treatment of paedophiles. The assumption, generally, is that once a sick f*** who will rape kids, always a sick f*** who will rape kids – and no amount of talking or therapy or rationality will ever change such a person into an unsick non-f*** who will not rape kids.

Personally, I am of two minds about this. First, I admit to being disturbed at the thought of a group of Polish ‘professionals’ (and I use this word very ironically, as I have had personal experience with the legal, medical and judicial systems here and I know all too well what kind of idiots are running these shows) making such a decision. I also feel that some – maybe many – paedophiles would actually agree to be chemically castrated of their own free will, if given the option; that has been shown in other countries. Finally, I am relieved that the process is ‘reversible’, meaning that when the drug is no longer administered, the person’s body chemistry returns to normal. Maybe with an aggressive combination of drugs and therapy and support, paedophiles can learn to control their urges without the drugs, and so may go off the treatment after some time. Who knows?

On the other hand: I am a mother and if anyone touched my kids I would want to kill them with my bare hands, their uncontrollable illness be damned. If some man so much as TOUCHED Max or Alex – God, it makes me sick to even think about it – you’d better believe I’d want the bastard castrated (chemically or otherwise). Of course that’s an emotional, Mama Lion response, but how else is a parent to respond? It’s my job to keep my children safe. That’s what I signed up for, right?

What are your thoughts on mandatory chemical castration?

So, you guys remember how Max went to get a haircut a few weeks ago? Well, it is already stiflingy, suffocatingly, stickingly (oh, shut up! I get to make up words on my blog if I feel like it!) hot in Warsaw, so Piotr campaigned heavily for him to take our sweet baby Alex to get a proper haircut (definition: one which does not involve me grimly hacking away at his wet post-bath hair as he swivels his head madly trying to see what the hell I am doing). I agreed, and off they went.

Well. He came back looking like another kid. An older one. Gah.

Here are some photos from Alex’s first meeting with the stylist’s scissors – and Piotr swears that he was not unhappy, though not totally bouncingly happy either – and so don’t be too concerned about the look on his face. Apprently he was just very watchful and silent and still and observing everything very carefully. The people at the salon could NOT believe it…they said they’ve never had such a young child get their hair cut,  and they rarely gets kids of ANY age so well-behaved.

Also: that stylist is kind of cute, huh?

Alex is a sweet boy – and thank GOD he is, or else I would have been so scarred by Max at the same age that I would not believe that kids could be so easy and think that all those parents who said they had easy kids were just big fat lying liars who lie – but he definitely has a stubborn streak in there somewhere. He’s not like Max, who screamed and shouted and writhed when he wanted his way. Alex just DOES IT. No commentary, no fuss, no nothing. He just walks over on his sturdy little legs, and starts. If you tell him no, he merely looks at you and continues; if you physically pick him up, he waits patiently until you put him down, then goes straight back to what he was doing. I think he’s great and an endless source of entertainment, to be honest, but don’t tell him that…

Anyway. Piotr took him out for a walk yesterday, and try as he might to get Alex to walk on the paved path, the kid kept taking off into the wet grass. After awhile, Piotr just gave up – and it was then that he saw what Alex was actually after: he wanted to pick flowers (for me, maybe?).

And THIS is the look you get when you tell him to stop doing something:

Very ‘You talkin’ to me? Are YOU talkin’ to ME?’

I am at a bit of a loss how exactly to begin this entry. Hence the sigh…

I joined an expat forum a couple of months ago, and as a result I have heard from a few other expats here in Poland – which I really like – and I have also been contacted by people outside of Poland. One woman wanted me to take part in a TV show (until she decided that I am not a foreigner in Poland), and a journalist from the UK wrote to me asking for a quotation about an incident that took place at the Canadian Embassy bar (it’s called the Beaver Club; no I am not kidding. Double sigh) here in Warsaw.

So far, so good (well, except for the ‘not a foreigner’ thing, I suppose. And the ‘beaver’ thing). Anyway. All was OK until I got an e-mail this morning from a woman in the USA. She and her husband are moving here this summer, so her husband can take up a three-year diplomatic post and she wrote to me, supposedly to ask some questions about life over here (which I would have been delighted to answer, BTW) but in reality, to condemn her new home of Warsaw to the murky depths of unsophisticated, uncultured, fat-old-women-in-headscarves and uneducated-homeless-people-bothering-us-wealthy-foreign-politicians hell. All without ever having been to Warsaw, or to Poland.

The general message of her letter was as follows:

‘Dear Michelle,

I love your blog, but I have a hard time believing that you are telling the truth about Warsaw which is – as everyone on the whole entire planet knows – a shit-hole of poor people with no education and bad teeth. We are only moving there because nobody else would take the post from hell, and so my husband negotiated danger pay and finally grudgingly accepted this awful position. I suppose that since the US government is paying for all travel expenses, I will console myself by bringing my entire wardrobe of designer clothing since (naturally) Warsaw has no access whatsoever to decent fashion, let alone international designers. I will also stock up on makeup and perfume, as I cannot imagine those dirty slaggy Polish women care about quality in cosmetics and are happy to paint themselves up with Maybelline (if they can even get it!) and some awful toilet water called ‘Stink de Skunkette’.

I am also considering bringing my entire CD collection, since I will not abide three years of listening to Polish ‘mountain’ music, or fiddles played by farmers… there is no way that Poland can produce anything like slick, modern, good music. I am surprised – nay, shocked! – that you have chosen to (a) live there, (b) marry a disgusting Pole and (c) expose your sweet darling beautiful boys to what is surely a damaging experience for them. I am not actually calling you a lousy mother explicitly, but I am definitely implying it in the most passive-aggressive way possible; I am also questioning your sanity, but again, I do so with nothing but love.

I hope to meet you when we deign to grace Warsaw with our classy, elegant and tone-lifting presence; is it possible to get a decent cup of coffee over there in Hell? If so, shall we meet up and laugh about all the Little Polish People?

Much love, from my Huge Diplomatic Mansion,

G’

I mean… what? WHAT? Flabbergasted am I. But since I know that ‘G’ reads my blog (hello!), I have included links above to various places around Warsaw which may reassure her that she is not moving to the Jumping Off Point. And also? If there are any others out there convinced that my day-to-day life consists of treks to the store at 5 AM and lining up for four hours to buy a roll of toilet paper and a loaf of bread, and that I also trudge in my grey housedress and flowered headscarf to the fields to pick potatoes for our dinner, read this, and fear not.

Oh, and G? I am politely declining your invitation for coffee… I am not sure that we will have all that much in common. I wish you lots of luck with your move, and I hope that you will give both Warsaw and Poland the chance to charm you and win you over; you are moving to a fascinating, beautiful, vibrant and cultured country full of intelligent, funny and loving people. I hope you will be open to what your new home will give you, because if you are, you will find that your life will be enriched beyond measure. I know that mine has been.

Additional Comment: Hey, y’all? This wasn’t her actual, real letter! It was my attempt at paraphrasing it in a (semi-) humorous way to capture its tone and message, since I didn’t want to publish the actual, real letter. First, I don’t feel good about copying and pasting a private e-mail from someone, and second, it was far too long.

I think a huge challenge faced by most parents with more than one kid is the jealousy and resentment exhibited by the older kid to the younger one. Max and Alex are certainly no exception to this general rule: Max was OK at first, but when he finally understood that Alex was not just ‘visiting’, but was actually here ‘to stay’, his behaviour rapidly descended in to ‘demon child’ territory, and shot over into the area of  ‘mass murderer’ if Alex dared to touch Max’s toys.

Stories shared by other, more battle-weary parents of two siblings who had been doing this for more than one year, as we have, were not encouraging: phrases like ‘blood on the walls’ and ‘emergency room’ and ’strangling each other’ were all uttered. Piotr and I tried to take it all with a grain of salt, and hope for the best – all the while trying to prepare for the worst, and accepting that in NO WAY could we do so. Such is parenthood, right?

We saw a few encouraging signs that Max kind of – sort of, maybe, perhaps, a tiny little bit – was starting to like Alex (we thought that ‘love’ was asking quite a lot, considering that Alex pulls Max’s hair and plays with his cars and spills his juice and rips his books), but overall, Max’s entire attitude was one of ignoring Alex, and occasionally wishing that Alex would go away.

All of which makes what happened yesterday so amazing. Ewa was leaving for the day and as usual, Alex ran for the lift as she got on; Max followed and all three of them stood in it giggling. Now, what Ewa usually does is she takes Alex down one floor on the lift, then they come right back up and I take Alex. Max didn’t know about this little game, as he is not usually home when Ewa leaves for the day; I told him that he and Alex would go down one floor with her and come back, but I guess he was too busy laughing to hear me. So.

The lift door closes, Ewa pushes the button, they start to go down. Max LOSES HIS MIND. Screaming, hysteria, kicking at the door and walls, and so on. They came back and out he ran straight into my arms; I picked him up and carried him into the flat and he starts shouting, “Alex! Alex! She’s taking Alex!” Piotr brings Alex in to the room – which calms Max down – and he says that Ewa told him as soon as the lift started to move Max ran over to Alex and grabbed him and stood between Ewa and his little brother. I asked him if he thought Ewa was stealing Alex, and Max said yes and then added that Ewa was NOT to steal Alex – Alex belongs here, with us… and he gave Alex a huge hug and kiss.

This is the same kid who not too long ago wanted to take Alex back to the store.

Of course, by this time tomorrow Max will have forgotten all about this surge of big-brotherly-feeling and will be sighing in frustration and rolling his eyes and Alex will once again be on the same level as a cockroach. But now I think maybe there’s some hope…

So last week, Ewa picked up Max from play school, and so naturally, Alex came along too. Turns out that Max was exhausted that day – whatever they did to him on Thursday, I hope they do it more, because he dropped like a stone that night and slept like one too – and so he begged Ewa to let him sit in Alex’s stroller. She agreed, and in he jumped, leaving tiny little Alex to walk home (which he prefers, anyway. This kid is not a fan of the stroller).

So, here they are – Max all tired and Alex all happy to be on his feet (Ewa took these on her ancient mobile phone, so forgive the quality):

And here is the best photo: Alex apparently stormed the stroller, shouted at Ewa and forced her to back off… and he pushed Max home, both of them giggling the whole way. And yes! He IS strong enough to do this on his own.

Must be all the veggies he’s eating. Or maybe he was just biding his time, waiting to repay Max for all those times Max pushed him around:

Where is my baby going, I wonder?

OK. Can I just get this out of the way?

I AM SCARED OF SNAKES.

There you go: my Top One Terror. I remember learning in psychology class that if we are exposed to enough of our deepest fear, we can actually die from it; heart attack, shock that we cannot recover from, whatever. And we were asked to describe our own personal ‘nightmare scenario’, one which – if it actually played out in real life – would literally scare us to death.

Guess what? Mine involved having to walk across a room of snakes writhing on the whole entire floor. I suppose if Max or Alex were on the other side of that room, in mortal peril, I’d manage to get it done somehow, but I think that is about the ONLY way you’d get me to tread on live, hissing snakes without dying of heart failure at the mere thought.

So. There I was this past Wednesday (Mother’s Day!) in my office, minding my own damn business, when Ewa and Alex come back from a walk and a visit to the store for diapers. And what does she do?

She plops THIS:

….on to my desk. About two inches away from my right hand.

I was not pleased.

Turns out that Alex saw this thing and fell madly in love with it, so Ewa bought it for him as a present. She saw my freaked-out face and kindly took it off my desk and gave it back to him, and he proceeded to PUT IT IN HIS MOUTH and walk around the living room laughing his head off. Disturbing image, to be sure. At least for me. Gah.

Then Max came home and decided that this snake was the coolest thing ever. He slept with it that night, which I forgot about when I went to check on him, causing me to leap five feet in the air when I saw my sweet sleeping boy with a horrible poisonous evil spawn-of-the-Devil snake curled up on the pillow next to his head.

I have only just come to fully realise that this is going to be my life for ever. Maybe you know that nursery rhyme: ‘Snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails; that’s what little boys are made of.’ So I get to look forward to rubber snakes on pillows and in mouths, and toilet humour and plastic spiders in my breakfast cereal (My Top Two Terror).

I swear: I can FEEL my scalp pricking in horror at the thought of the things to come. Maybe it’s my hair turning white.

As promised, here is the gift Max made me for Mother’s Day, hanging up on the wall:

And here are the flowers that greeted me at 6:00 on Wednesday morning, delivered to my bed by a delighted 3.5 year old:

Sometimes I am discouraged and overwhelmed by just how hard it is to be a Mom… but then I see how much my children love me, and I figure I have to be doing something right.